


atlas, unshrugging (five times coulson watches her back as she sleeps - or tries to)

by shortitude



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:12:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is so much tension in her shoulders, so much history, so much suffering for one young woman, and yet they still look so…<i>solid</i>, and Skye, and perfectly ready to hold the weight of the entire world, and god he’s been searching for someone like her ever since his childhood hero went under ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	atlas, unshrugging (five times coulson watches her back as she sleeps - or tries to)

**Author's Note:**

> once upon a time an anon asked me for a fic about coulson watching skye's back while she slept, and relationship introspection. i tend to stay away from fics that explore the point of view of the male character, and i think other writers in this fandom do phil a much greater justice than i could, but. well. a little bit of liquid courage and this finally wrote itself.

**one**

The first time it happens, he doesn’t think he’ll make a habit of it. But he’s already wrong there, and he hasn't been wrong in judging Skye before; it’s not the first time he’s watched her sleep after being injured.

But this time is different than the race against time that followed the shooting in Quinn’s mansion. This time, waiting is all they can do. So he waits. Picks up a chair and pulls it up next to crystal box they call a quarantine room now, and decides he’ll be the Director of SHIELD from here, from where he can be sure that they got Skye out, at least. 

He tells himself that’s it, that’s the main reason he’s doing this. Guilt, of having made the wrong choices as a leader, as an Agent, as a Director. He tells himself that if he gets to see Skye wake up and look at him with that expression that says _we’re going to figure this out together, even if we’re alone in the dark_ , not all is a failure. But this is New SHIELD, and it’s precisely because of Skye that the rules have changed; she’s the one who drove it into his skull, his tender fragile and impressionable skull, fresh from coming back from the dead, that even one loss is a failure. 

Trip is his failure. He decides this now, for himself, knowing that in doing so he is doing what he’s done before with poor results: contradicting her. But he knows, as soon as she wakes up from her troubled sleep, she’ll blame herself for Trip. He’s the Director of SHIELD, he thinks, not the Director of nothing, and that has to count for something; so he makes the decision now. The loss is on him, and from now on he will tolerate no more losses. 

So when Skye wakes up, and calls herself the rotten core at the center of it all, _yes_ , he snaps. He snaps, because there’s a wall between them and he can’t hold her, because there was a wall between them and he couldn’t protect her, because there was a wall between them and he’d put it there for months thinking it would be better that way, and it hadn’t been. 

When he storms out of the labs, it’s because the look in her eyes, so shocked and vulnerable, so surprised that even after what happened in San Juan she is still, for unfathomable reasons, surprised that he will always defend her, it’s too much. Words want to come out, and some words _do_ , and he is the Director of SHIELD.

And he should know better, be better, _do_ better. For her, if not for himself. (And it matters, of course it does. He’s gotten rid of levels and the Index, for her. His first decisions as Director have been for her. It matters.)

He storms out, because it’s easier, at that moment, than pressing his hand to the glass in a plea for her touch, and a promise that he’ll fix all her pain. (She wouldn’t want that, anyway.)

**two**

The second time it happens, he doesn’t mean to. He’s in a drugged haze, painkillers serving to keep his mind off the pain from his wrist up, but it’s still not enough for him to notice that she’s there. Which, makes no sense, he thinks. 

But all the sense in the world, thinks the looser part of him, the one high on morphine and more inclined to yearn for touch now that he has one less hand to touch with. Ah, that. It’s easier, instead, to look at Skye. She’s sleeping in a chair in his hospital room, and it can’t be comfortable, he thinks. His bed his comfortable, and she should sleep in it. 

(No. Wait. No. _Yes_. But, no. He can’t think straight.)

Her back is to him. 

He knows this isn’t an conscious choice from her side, he knows because her arm is still stretched out and half-reaching behind her, fingers curled around his fingers. The only five he has left. (Unless you count ten toes, he thinks, and laughs silently to himself.)

There is so much tension in her shoulders, so much history, so much suffering for one young woman, and yet they still look so… _solid_ , and Skye, and perfectly ready to hold the weight of the entire world, and god he’s been searching for someone like her ever since his childhood hero went under ice. 

No, no, he _knew_ what sort of a person she was, possibly since before he met her, on quiet nights of dutifully listening to her podcasts and finding her opinions spot-on and funny in an attractive way. But she constantly surprises him, to this very day. He could blame this very day on the meds, but he knows it’s more of a Skye thing. 

He wonders where Cal is. Wonders what happens to Jiaying, and the rest of her lackeys. But all those thoughts are in the background, because she’s _here_ and she’s holding him and he doesn’t think he’s felt this anchored since she hugged him before they were split apart, and San Juan tore them down. 

He is not of sound mind but he is of clear heart, and in that moment he notices the lint on her sweater. The tendril of hair left over her right shoulder. The bruise on her cheek from this angle. The tension in her back, the weight of the world, the responsibility he knows she’ll take on herself when she wakes up, because it’s _Skye_ , and she _would_. 

He wishes he could lift his arm and brush that hair off her shoulder, and the lint off her sweater, and take that weight so they can at least share it. But he’s left with one hand. So, he thinks, hazy and lost to morphine drips, maybe he’ll endeavour to touch with one hand all that he never dared to with two. 

**three**

She’s cut her hair. 

This isn’t news. It’s been a week since Skye walked into his office with her hair above shoulder-length and a file in her hands requesting an official file change. _Daisy_ wears her head high and her shoulders straight and pretends she doesn’t hesitate before talking to the people who’ve once wondered if she was a monster now or not.

_Daisy_ gives her name to targets and enemies and allies like she’s reaching into the past and taking her parents’ hands, and saying _I know_. And Daisy cut her hair. He’s reacted to this already, professional and cool-headed, and perfectly aware of his bluff. Praying that she wasn’t. 

But he notices it now, because he walks into the common area to find her asleep. 

She’s still sitting in her chair, bent over the table, her head resting on her crossed arms, and – 

Her hair.

\-- the nape of her neck, bare. 

He’s terrible, he thinks. Not entitled to this, undeserving, a mess. But he follows the line of her neck, the expanse of skin that stretches down to where her shirt hangs loose on her back, and _wishes_. 

And then, she squirms, and grunts. 

It’s not the first time he’s woken her up from a nightmare. But it’s the first time he does it with like this; new, shiny metal hand pressed lightly against the nape of her neck, and a quiet _Daisy_ whispered to draw her attention. His touch retreated before she opens her eyes and snaps out of it, like hiding the evidence of a crime will help at all. 

She shrugs, uneasy from having been caught during a nightmare more than from having been found sleeping at his desk, and gives him a tired smile. He swears he feels metal fingertips tingle. 

**four**

“We’re adults,” he tells her, when he suggest they share the hotel bed, like all that is meant so say _this is fine_ , and _it won’t mean anything_.

Daisy raises one eyebrow at him, but climbs on the bed next to him anyway, because two motel rooms are expensive for a solo (kind of solo) mission that’s not supposed to exist (so much that it’s not even in the budget). “It’s not our status as adults that worries me, Coulson,” she jokes, but doesn’t let him wonder or rebuttle. 

She turns her back to him, curls up on her side, and he just – he stares. 

She’s still in her suit and god, yes, fine, _he likes the suit_. It has details that bring attention to parts of her that make him want to curse himself for being so pathetic: her back, the back of her neck, the space between her shoulder blades. She’s still in her suit, and her back is to him, and it’s possibly the best view he’s seen in years. 

Even above Paris at night. 

But, much like Paris at night, and any sight of beauty, she is unattainable. Warm, but untouchable. Hot, but unaware of his gaze taking her in. 

“I can tell.” 

Or. He’s wrong. 

“You’re trembling,” she murmurs, and shifts; rests her head on her hand, gets comfortable. Relaxes her shoulders. (He wants to touch, he does, he does.) “It sends off – you vibrate differently.” 

Caught red-handed, or red-vibrationed, he stays quiet. 

“What’s on your mind?” 

This, here: the impasse. He could lie and save face, or he could hear the opening she gives him, and dare to explore. He wonders what Daisy would do. What Skye would do. He knows. 

“Rough day we’ve had,” he says, and the reasons still linger between them, the bruises under her suit and his, the ties severed in this town, the reason they’re lying low for twelve hours before getting out of dodge. It’s not a lie. It’s not lying. 

She sighs, and turns around on her back, then once more so she’s on her side but facing him. “Yeah, rough day.” 

The last time she had a rough day, he’d held her (with both hands) while she cried. It doesn’t escape either of them. 

The expression on her face is inescrutable, and he quite wonders if she hasn’t turned into a better Agent than he’d anticipated she would, while he was blinking. (And he’d anticipated she’d be pretty damn perfect.) Then it softens, and she reaches up to put her hand on his metal hand. 

“This is nice,” she says, about his prosthetic. About touching him. “Drowns out the – the buzzing.” When she’s wired up, like tonight, the way the world hums becomes deafeningly loud for her. He glances down at their hands, and curls his fingers into hers, marveled when she doesn’t pull away. 

She picks up on that. 

“Would you rather I just turn back around, Coulson? I know you like my back.” 

It hasn’t been a good day. She is – god, he loves her, yes, but she _is_ \-- reckless when she’s punishing herself, reckless when she is trying to save the world to make up for the time she almost condemned it. It hasn’t been a good day, and she punishes herself by trying to cause a scission between them, he knows.

It’s not the first time she’s done it.

This time, he’s ready. 

“No,” he answers. “You’re good any way.” 

**five**

There is a scar on the back of her left shoulder, a few weeks fresh, but it changes nothing. She is still beautiful, and strong, even when she is vulnerable. 

He thinks, yes, this must be why he’s so lost in love with her. This, and the million other reasons why. 

He watches quietly, how her muscles expand when she inhales, how the contract when she reaches behind him and blindly finds his arm. He finds himself dragged forward, his arm forced to drape around her waist. (Like it’s hard, come on.) 

“Stop being a sap, I can feel it,” she mutters, half asleep and the most adorable thing in the world. 

He kisses the scar on her shoulder, and laughs when she presses against him, quietly. “What does it feel like?” _When I love you. When I am constantly in awe._

She grunts. “Shall I compare thee to a bla bla _blah_ \-- it tickles, Coulson,” she whines, and lifts his hand to press a kiss to his knuckles. Metal or not, he feels it. He _does_. “’s not polite to tickle people when they’re just trying to sleep. Let alone superheroes.”

“Yes,” he murmurs, and draws her in close. “Let alone superheroes.” 

“Mm.” 

He presses a kiss to the nape of her neck. “I could get in trouble for that.”

“Yep.” 

And another kiss, between her shoulder blades, shifting down under the covers. “That would be bad.” Bites, lightly, at her skin. 

She groans, and rolls over. “God, come _here_.”

He is, right now, not sad to watch her back get out of his sight.


End file.
